Slothrust

Mannequin Pussy, Quality Cable

Slothrust

Slothrust is principal songwriter, singer, guitar player and unrepentant aesthete Leah Wellbaum, with drummer Will Gorin and bassist Kyle Bann. On their fourth full-length album The Pact, Slothrust constructs a luscious, ethereal cosmos perforated with wormy portals and magic wardrobes, demonstrating more clearly than ever the band’s deft shaping of contrasting sonic elements to forge a muscular sound that’s uniquely their own. The album was recorded in Los Angeles with producer and mixer Billy Bush (Garbage, Neon Trees, The Boxer Rebellion). Cultivating their potent brew of classically informed, soulful rock in the fertile Brooklyn indie scene, Slothrust released their debut LP, Feels Your Pain, in 2012, followed by 2014’s Of Course You Do. The band expanded their fervent following via the song “7:30 am,” selected as the theme for the FX Network show "You’re The Worst”. Their 2016 Dangerbird debut album Everyone Else established the band as a breed apart, capable of serving up deceptively clever epics that veer satisfyingly between incandescent riffing and pop hooks, winsome anxiety and powerful heft. Throughout 2016 and 2017, Slothrust lit up audiences on sold-out headline tours, festival dates and support tours with Highly Suspect in the US and Manchester Orchestra in Europe. The band closed out 2017 with Show Me How You Want It To Be, an EP of of unexpected and inventive covers of songs by artists as diverse as Al Green and Britney Spears, Black Sabbath and Louis Armstrong.

Mannequin Pussy

“Real love tends to be as indescribable as it is undeniable. Philadelphia’s Mannequin Pussy nail
this sensation via fist-pumped, punk-pop fervor and raging DayGlo guitars…a post-grunge
anthem that cuts out almost too suddenly, leaving us wanting more. - Pitchfork

“Romantic is less about the gooey stuff and more about everything that surrounds love — the
triumphs, the failures and how we transform from the mess of it all. Mostly, it's just a reminder

to love someone.” - NPR

“Some of the smartest and most economically-constructed punk music to come out in a long

while.” - Stereogum

“Take cover: This band doesn’t miss.” – A.V. Club

There are certain ineffable qualities to being a punk band that exists meaningfully. In the most
simplistic terms, within the music there must be some sort of art practice, something
communicative. Even in its most barebones brashness, precise construction goes a long way.
This has never been a problem for Philadelphia’s Mannequin Pussy. With two full-length
albums, 2014’s G.P. and 2016’s Romantic, inspiring critical acclaim from places like Pitchfork,
NPR, Stereogum, the A.V. Club and more, it’s something impossible to describe and impossibly
easy to notice. “Being in a punk band where you don’t want to take yourself too seriously while
trying to aggressively make art through your music,” frontwoman Marisa Dabice explains of the
band’s objective, “I think people sometimes expect kitschy-ness and I don’t want to do that.”
There’s no danger of it.

Mannequin Pussy began as a duo between childhood best friends Dabice and guitarist Thanasi
Paul. The pair wrote together, eventually feeling pressure to record a collection of songs. They
did, and the bulk of Dabice’s first ever original material became their debut release, G.P. The
demos showed immediate promise: Dabice’s idiosyncratic guitar playing of someone
rediscovering their musical edge and Paul’s instrumental mobility. G.P. is a hopeful sort of
scrappy experiment—but one that wouldn’t fully realize Mannequin Pussy until the duo met
their creative collaborators in bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford and drummer Kaleen Reading.

Now a quartet, the band’s sophomore LP, Romantic, embodies Mannequin Pussy’s greatness:
20-minutes of hungry, genre-defying eclecticism that no longer feels like a collection of tracks
but a record of real, discernible cohesion. Romantic kicks off with its title track, Dabice whisper-
singing intimate vignettes of loneliness before exploding into trash-punk realizations—it’s hard
to miss the mark when she offers the eyebrow-furrowing scream “I’m in hell.” It proceeds
“Emotional High,” the most loving track on the record—a punk-pop anthem that removes itself
from the transparent toxicity of some of the album’s other themes, or the progressive politicism
of a song like “Pledge,” which offers the listener a new pledge of allegiance, one to themselves
and no one else.

At their heart, Mannequin Pussy is a band that mosaics, taking unlike parts and making
something new and whole from it’s unique pieces. It’s the direct result an artistic marriage
between it’s four members, helmed by Dabice’s no non-sense, vulnerable and strong worldview.
“What we hope for when people experience our music is a cathartic release, to not feel so alone
in the emotions that most of us have, to maybe see the way other people experience theirs,” she
says of the band’s aspirations. “Above all, the hope is that someone can listen to this album, feel
connected to it on a personal level and have it set them free from all the toxic feelings that we
hold on to.” It’s evident that they will, and do.